Just ordered one myself as i have 1 f3 2tb already for a few months and its been great. I then bought another 2tb f3 a week ago which has to go back becasue when i turn the computer on the first 3 mins it makes a bad grinding type sound, i think its a bearings as after the 3 min it seems to be fine but not to happy about it.

so back it goes and ordered a f4 as everyone seems to think it will be a better drive than the f3

less power
more reliable as it uses 3 platters instead of 4
same performance as the f3 or if not a littile bit more better
less heat than the f3
less noise than the f3

I received the 2 drives yesterday and put them into my home build atom NAS. No problems detecting them - but in Linux they are coming up as 512 block - how do I go about formatting them as 4k sector drives?

Arrggghhh~~!`1`!~!!!! That manual is useless and doesn't mention anything about the jumper or the 4k sector.

Definitely waiting for reviews/reports on how it plays with XP/2003 before ordering now.

In the WD drives, the 512 sector emulation is automatic and there's no way to disable it, so it's always lying to the OS. In Linux, you had to use parted (not fdisk) to partition it so it'll be aligned corrected.

Why u trying to do this I have just bought One of these for my videos backup and using it with windows 7 will I be alright as I have a f3 as well which is a 2tb

Are you asking why he's not trying to use it under Win7? It's because he has an existing NAS running Linux and he doesn't want to get a new one (and I'm not sure why he'd get Win7 even if he did).

If that's not what you are asking, I can't figure what it is you are questioning.

tutu - please keep us updated. I am on the verge of buying from newegg, and would love to get a little more feeback before I jump in. BTW, anyone have any idea why the "F4EG" does not appear in the newegg description? I almost missed finding it because of that.

I used linux to align my only partition to start at sector 64 (not sure why some sites recommend 2048??). I am not sure how to does this with parted. I would like to use a GPT partition table really - but parted can't align automatically I don't think as the drive reports 512 instead of 4k??

I used linux to align my only partition to start at sector 64 (not sure why some sites recommend 2048??). I am not sure how to does this with parted. I would like to use a GPT partition table really - but parted can't align automatically I don't think as the drive reports 512 instead of 4k?? :oops:

Offset 2048 = aligned
Offset 63 = not-aligned

Looking at the benchmarks, reads are not effected by non-alignment, and also no effect on sequential writes. Only effect random, small blocks, which gets a 50% penalty from the read-modify-write operation.

From what he stated, Vista/W7 starts with offset at sector 2048. I also noticed less capacity when I formatted in Vista/W7 vs XP.

I don't think newer WD 4k drives were "fixed" report 4k. If they reported 4k to the OS, then it will not work/recognize for XP, W2k3, or older NAS devices. They all seem to be using this 512B emulation for now, or have a jumper to disable the emulation.

Would like to see Samsung release some information for their implementation of 4k sector emulation and if they're going to release a utility to fix the offset, or say use with Vista/W7 only. The drive itself doesn't even have a warning like the WD advanced drives.

You can either use 64 or 2048 for the first partition (the latter is the Windows7/Mac OS X standard).

I have tried both fdisk at 64 and parted at 2048 and have ended up using parted for GPT on 2048 as it makes sense to make sure the drives will work OK on any Win7 machines/macs in the future. I also might use JBOD for 4TB so I think I need GPT for that instead of MBR.

GPT ends the 2TB partition on 3907029134s (highest was 3907029167 which it couldn't use). What should I set it to??? does it need to be in 4096 blocks? Does it need to be divideable by 8/512?

This is how this drive gets partitioned in different utils (all in sectors):

Windows 7
2048 - 3907026943

fdisk (DOS compatibility OFF)
2048 - 3907029167

parted - MBR
2048 - 3907029167

parted - GPT
2048 - 3907029134 (the latter is smaller due to the redundant GPT table at the end)

What should the end be for optimal? Or does the start only matter? I am only using 1 partition.

Incidentally, I tried the jumpers on the drive. The first one stopped the drive from being recognised, the second one had no visible affect in hdparm. This was top/bottom - I didn't try left/right on the jumpers.

The effect is that the disk will read or write a few sectors more at the end of the partition. Remember that there are quite a lot of space hidden away from the user and operating system by the disk. Space which the disk uses internally as redundancy and wear levelling.

If you on the other hand miss-align the start of the partition it would effect every read or write done to the partition. For every 4k read done on the file system would result in 8k read on the disk even though it would still return no more than 4k. Large reads and writes is less effected. 8k read done on the file system would only result in 12k read on the disk making it more effective than the 4k case."

Assuming you purchased it from Scan, would you be able to check the warranty status with the serial number on the Samsung checker?

I know Scan themselves offer a 36 month warranty but it would be useful to know if an RMA can be made with Samsung direct. Many Samsung drives sold by Scan are not covered by Samsung for warranty as they are OEM or unofficial imports.

I just bought some from Scan...
They come up HD204UI - 103 - Out of Service area
The product has been brought in from outside of this service region and cannot be serviced. Please contact your reseller or distributor.
Oh well...

I just bought some from Scan...They come up HD204UI - 103 - Out of Service areaThe product has been brought in from outside of this service region and cannot be serviced. Please contact your reseller or distributor.Oh well...

Well, as long as I can return it to scan for the next few months that's fine.
If a computer component works for 6mths it tends to go on and work until it's Â£worthless...
Haven't actually plugged any of my drives in yet - trying to back up TBs off old drives is taking ages...

I just bought some from Scan...They come up HD204UI - 103 - Out of Service areaThe product has been brought in from outside of this service region and cannot be serviced. Please contact your reseller or distributor.

Thanks for checking. I suspected this might be the case.

meridius wrote:

i bought them from there what does this mean i have no warrenty ?

honeymonster wrote:

Well, as long as I can return it to scan for the next few months that's fine.If a computer component works for 6mths it tends to go on and work until it's Â£worthless...

The warranty is with Scan for 36 months without the option of returning direct to Samsung. Scan's warranties usually work on the following basis - if it fails and if at the time of RMA they have stock of the same model of drive, you'll get a replacement. If the drive is no longer produced then you'll get a partial refund based on how long you have had it.

So it's not a huge issue but some people may want the option of doing RMAs with Samsung direct (equal or better replacement offered) for the full 3 year term, in addition to the retailer's warranty.

Scan's prices do tend to be a little lower compared to retailers who sell officially sourced drives, so that's a plus!

I bought half of dozen of these drives, originally for media but they might replace my caviar blacks now as performance is pretty decent and they run quiet (most of the time) and cool.

First off, I can hear them seek when I run the HDTune read test but they don't cause the case to hum like the blacks do or make weird seeking noises like my old F3's. They are pretty quiet. If you are transferring large files you won't hear the drive much. Lots of small files is a different matter. You will hear it, but it's NOT loud or obtrusive. I am using an 800D case which has no drive dampening. Overall happy with the F4's from an acoustic point of view. I'd say they are even quiet enough for silence enthusiasts if you suspend them or use dampening. According to Samsungs EZTool which recognises these drives there is no AAM support so no way to make the drive quieter via software. I also tried HDTune Pro which shows AAM unchecked and value set to 0. You have the options of setting it to 128 or 256. Neither seems to make a difference.

Temperature wise, they stay around 31-35 degrees C which is approx 7 to 10 degrees cooler then my caviar blacks. Like the WD Green (3 platter design), they probably don't need active cooling. The 800D drive cooling isn't the best so you can knock a few degrees off if using something like a HAF.

Regarding sector size I'm using them currently as data/media drives so I just formatted them using the windows 7 default (which is 512 bytes). If someone can show me how to format them using 4k sectors I'd appreciate it.

Now to performance. Here is a comparison I ran between the Samsung, the WD Green 2TB (WD20EARS-00MVWB0) which also has 3 x 667gb platters, and WD Black 2TB. I formatted each drive for a single partition using the default Windows 7 settings in disk manager, and copied my documents folder and pics folder to each one (About 2GB in total). Each drive was tested from the same SATA port on my Classified motherboard using the latest Intel RST drivers. Tested with latest version of CrystalDiskmark (3.0 x64 Build 2010/3/21), and did read test with latest version of HDTunePro (4.60). OS was Windows 7 Ultimate 64. Boot drive was Crucial C300 256GB SSD.

Note : I have multiple Samsung, WD Green and WD Black drives so redid the tests on those as well in case I got a dodgy Samsung. The results were negligible in each case.

Set the block size to 256KB for all instances. Select the right drive.
Run a couple of instances Set Position % at 0 for one and 50 for the other. Hit start and after a minute take a screenshot showing all windows.
If you could do the same with 3 instances at 0, 33, 66 and 4 at 0, 25, 50, 75. You should hit the reset button between runs to clear the graph
that would be great.

is the 2TB drive a 3platter one? and so the 1,5TB would be... 2 platter?

thanks

Yes, the F4 series drives have 667GB platters in them. 3x667GB = 2TB. A two-platter drive would be 2x667GB = 1.33TB. Any 1.5TB would have to be based on three 500GB platters (F3) or else they would have to use 3 platters still and just use 1/3 of the third which wouldn't make any sense. There is a 320GB F4 drive... Assuming this is also a 667GB platter drive, it would be one side of one single platter.

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